The Valley of Silent Men eBook

CHAPTER I

In the mind of James Grenfell Kent, sergeant in the
Royal Northwest Mounted Police, there remained no
shadow of a doubt. He knew that he was dying.
He had implicit faith in Cardigan, his surgeon friend,
and Cardigan had told him that what was left of his
life would be measured out in hours—­perhaps
in minutes or seconds. It was an unusual case.
There was one chance in fifty that he might live two
or three days, but there was no chance at all that
he would live more than three. The end might come
with any breath he drew into his lungs. That
was the pathological history of the thing, as far
as medical and surgical science knew of cases similar
to his own.

Personally, Kent did not feel like a dying man.
His vision and his brain were clear. He felt
no pain, and only at infrequent intervals was his
temperature above normal. His voice was particularly
calm and natural.

At first he had smiled incredulously when Cardigan
broke the news. That the bullet which a drunken
half-breed had sent into his chest two weeks before
had nicked the arch of the aorta, thus forming an
aneurism, was a statement by Cardigan which did not
sound especially wicked or convincing to him.
“Aorta” and “aneurism” held
about as much significance for him as his perichondrium
or the process of his stylomastoid. But Kent
possessed an unswerving passion to grip at facts in
detail, a characteristic that had largely helped him
to earn the reputation of being the best man-hunter
in all the northland service. So he had insisted,
and his surgeon friend had explained.

The aorta, he found, was the main blood-vessel arching
over and leading from the heart, and in nicking it
the bullet had so weakened its outer wall that it
bulged out in the form of a sack, just as the inner
tube of an automobile tire bulges through the outer
casing when there is a blowout.

“And when that sack gives way inside you,”
Cardigan had explained, “you’ll go like
that!” He snapped a forefinger and thumb to drive
the fact home.

After that it was merely a matter of common sense
to believe, and now, sure that he was about to die.
Kent had acted. He was acting in the full health
of his mind and in extreme cognizance of the paralyzing
shock he was contributing as a final legacy to the
world at large, or at least to that part of it which
knew him or was interested. The tragedy of the
thing did not oppress him. A thousand times in
his life he had discovered that humor and tragedy
were very closely related, and that there were times
when only the breadth of a hair separated the two.
Many times he had seen a laugh change suddenly to
tears, and tears to laughter.